The Evil Wizard Smallbone Page 10

  “Did you really . . . ? Scratch that,” Nick said hastily. “Um, how do the Sentries work?”

  Smallbone started walking again. “They keep out whatever I don’t want in my territory, mostly Fidelou. If they were working like they should, the Stream would have risen and swept them Howling Coyotes right off. Still would, if they tried to cross the bridge on four feet. Even as it is, Fidelou can’t get in until they’re all down.” He picked up his pace. “Hurry up with that last question, Foxkin. I got work to do.”

  They passed out of the woods and into the meadow. Smoke curled from the chimneys of Evil Wizard Books, and its many windows twinkled in the thin sunlight.

  “What’ll happen if the Sentries fall?”

  “Fidelou will blow in like a hurricane,” Smallbone said shortly. “Then I’ll fight him, and I’ll win or he will. Either way, the Cove’ll go to wrack and ruin. And now I’d like a little peace. You’re a kid, ain’t you? Go off somewheres and play.”

  Then Smallbone opened the back door, stalked inside, and closed it, leaving Nick outside in the snow.

  Nick kicked the boot scraper. That hurt, so he levitated it as far as he could, which was almost to the woodshed. Then he trudged out through the snow to fetch it, because Smallbone would want to know how it landed all the way out there and Nick couldn’t think of anything to tell him that wouldn’t get him turned into something with too many legs, or maybe none at all.

  When he finally came inside, the kitchen was empty except for a gently snoring heap of black and ginger fur on the rocker. Nick shucked off his jacket and marched into the bookshop.

  It was quiet but not peaceful. The air quivered with tension, and even the clock seemed to be ticking faster than usual, like a panicky heartbeat. Or maybe that was him.

  “Listen,” he said. “E-Z Spelz is great, but if it comes down to a fight between Smallbone and this Fidelou guy, I’m going to need a weapon or more protection or something. Bow-Wowzer Meowzer just isn’t going to cut it.”

  There was a brooding pause, followed by a storm of rustling and rattling back in the shelves, a heavy thud, then silence.

  Nick lit the oil lamp and went to investigate. In the third aisle back, a fat leather-covered book lay on the floor in front of the NATURE section.

  He picked it up. 101 Steps to the Animal You. He appealed to the shadowy shelves. “How is this going to help?”

  He didn’t really expect an answer, so he wasn’t disappointed when he didn’t get one, unless you could count the strident bonging of the clock as it struck five.

  Supper! he thought, and ran back to the kitchen, pausing only to slide 101 Steps under the clock. He wondered if Smallbone would be willing to eat leftover chili.

  But Smallbone didn’t come down. He sent Mutt and Jeff, though, so Nick fed them, then retrieved the book and took it out to the barn to study after he’d done the evening chores.

  The bookshop’s latest gift was not full of illustrations and charts like E-Z Spelz. And although it was interactive, in the magical sense that it talked to him, it wasn’t nearly as user-friendly.

  I’m doing this under protest. You don’t know enough about magic to read me. I’m not even the book you wanted.

  “You got that right,” Nick said. “Transformation is stupid. I want to learn how to call up storms and throw rocks and fire.”

  Of course you do: you’re an elemental wizard. If you’re any kind of wizard at all.

  Nick flared up. “What do you mean? E-Z Spelz said I had lots of Talent and Will!”

  E-Z Spelz also said you had roughly the Concentration of a hungry squirrel and the Control of a goat in a vegetable garden. You’ve got a nasty temper, too. Wizards have to keep a cool head.

  “What about Smallbone?”

  Print on paper shouldn’t be able to look indignant, but this print managed.

  Smallbone is one of the greatest human shape-shifters who has ever lived.

  “I know that!” Nick yelled. “That’s why I need to learn how to turn myself human again!”

  AHA! You DO want to learn shape-shifting!

  Nick snapped 101 Steps shut, slapped it onto a hay bale, and fumed. After a while, he picked it up again and opened it. The pages were blank.

  “I really hate getting turned into things. It wouldn’t be so bad if I could turn myself back, but I don’t know how. If that’s what the bookshop wants you to teach me, I want to learn.”

  The page remained blank. Nick turned to the next. Blank. The next page featured the first of a series of woodcuts of spiders and rocks and crows. Nick kept turning. Words printed on five consecutive pages added up to a message:

  Why.

  Are.

  You.

  Still.

  Reading?

  Nick turned some more.

  The last page read:

  Congratulations. You’re the Most Stubborn One of All. Maybe your totem animal is a donkey. Turn to the introduction. It’s at the front.

  Grimly, Nick flipped back to the first page, now filled with print.

  Shape-shifting is hard — much harder if you’re not a natural shape-shifter, which we both know you’re not. This is because it’s physically impossible. For the most part, people are either much bigger or much smaller than animals. Think of the difference in mass between you and a frog, for instance, or you and an elephant.

  Am I going too fast for you here?

  “No,” Nick said. “I get it.”

  You better.

  There are a lot of theories about excess mass and so on, and maybe some of them are even true. But for now, we’ll just say it’s magic and leave it at that. You’re not interested in theory anyway.

  Because it’s essentially against nature, shape-shifting takes an unusual amount of skill and concentration — even more than calling a storm, and that’s saying something. You can’t stop or let your mind wander or change it halfway through. Because if you do, Bad Things will happen. You can get stuck between shapes or explode or die. You can keep too much of your human mind and not know how to use your animal body, or you can keep too little and lose interest in turning yourself back. You have to know the spells dead cold and you have to keep your focus. Most important, you have to keep your animal and your human selves in perfect balance.

  To do that, you have to know who you are.

  Nick turned the page.

  All righty, then. Let’s get started.

  Step 1: Finding Your Totem Animal

  All human beings have a totem animal, whose spirit reflects and shapes their characters. If you want to learn Transformation, you have to find yours.

  And then there was a list of questions, like the quiz at the end of a chapter in a schoolbook. Dopey-looking questions about what he’d do if this or that thing happened, like one of the psychological tests the school counselor gave him when he got in a fight.

  He went to turn the page.

  Oh, no you don’t. Am I called 101 Steps to the Animal You, Except for the Steps You Don’t Feel Like Taking? I don’t think so. This test is Step 1. If you don’t complete it, you can’t take Step 2. I knew you didn’t really want to do this.

  Nick fished the stub of a pencil out of his overalls and took the test. He threw in a bunch of wrong answers just to mess with it.

  His totem animal was a fox.

  Next night, it began to snow again and kept on snowing as if it never intended to stop. And it didn’t stop. Every trip outside was an Arctic adventure. If it hadn’t been for Smallbone’s paths, Nick would have spent all his free time shoveling his way to the barn and the woodshed.

  After a day or two, Nick discovered that, big as it was, Evil Wizard Books wasn’t big enough to keep two crabby people from getting on each other’s nerves. It felt like every time he wanted to go in the bookshop, there was Smallbone, scanning the shelves with his beard tipped up and his hat tipped back, or taking books down and poking at them as though he thought there might be something hidden in their covers.

 
Like, for instance, the chart Nick still had tucked away under his clean shirts.

  That chart fascinated Nick. He’d take it out at night and stare at it, turning it this way and that, trying to make sense of it. He knew it made a pattern. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel it, like the static on a car radio when you weren’t near enough a town to get a clear signal. He wanted to beg the bookshop for something that would help him hear what the chart was trying to say, but even after Smallbone retreated into the tower, he never knew when the old wizard might show up. He’d even started doing all his reading in the hayloft. He didn’t want to risk getting turned into anything before he knew how to turn himself back again.

  101 Steps to the Animal You was giving him trouble.

  Shape-shifting, apparently, didn’t work the same way as the transformations Smallbone had used on Nick.

  Animal You had explained it in Step 2:

  Think of it like this:

  If you manage to keep hold of who you are while you’re being transformed, then you’re a shape-shifter, and can turn yourself back if you want to. If you shift yourself and get distracted and lose track of who you are, then you’re transformed and will stay so forever, or until somebody else transforms you back.

  Do you understand?

  “Of course,” Nick said. “It’s simple.”

  No, it isn’t. And you don’t understand at all. But you will. You’ll have to, if you want to get to Step 99.

  “What’s Step 99?”

  The spell for turning yourself back into a boy.

  And then there was a whole series of exercises on things like Lucid Dreaming and Balance and Meditation.

  Nick hated these exercises, and he wasn’t very good at them. If he hadn’t been as stubborn as a goat, he would have given up at Step 10.

  Apparently things weren’t going well for Smallbone, either.

  One morning, a hedge sprang up around the meadow, ten feet high at least, made of what looked like giant blackberry canes. It bristled with thorns as long as Nick’s little finger and sharp as knives, as he discovered when he touched one. But when he returned to the barn that afternoon, the hedge had shrunk to a more realistic size, and when he came out again to make supper, it was gone.

  The next day, a wave of water surged across the kitchen floor, drenching Mutt and Jeff, who were asleep on the hearth rug. Afraid for the books, Nick waded out to the bookshop. A cascade was pouring down the stairs, swirling around the grandfather clock, and drowning the bottom row of books. As Nick stood gaping, a carved wooden duck bobbed down the waterfall and bumped gently against his ankles.

  He picked it up. It was beautifully carved and painted.

  He put it on the table and sloshed his way to the front door and opened it.

  He felt the water rush over his feet, freezing into a slick of ice on the porch and the front steps. Flow, he thought. You don’t want to be stuck in leather and wood and paper. You want to be outside. Hurry!

  One moment, he was alive with power; the next, he was swaying and shivering in the bitter cold. He slammed the door shut, leaned against it until his head stopped spinning, then turned and opened his eyes.

  The floor was dry. So was the rug and the books and the stair and everything else that had been soaked a moment before.

  The next day, the wind blew so hard, Nick could barely make it to the woodshed. When he got there, it was surrounded by a ring of fire that melted the snow for two feet around.

  And although Nick had the bookshop to himself now, the shelves were stocked with ordinary books with titles like Fun with Armadillos and How to Be a Truly Effective Salesman. There wasn’t a magical title in the place.

  Which brought him back to Animal You. He’d already reached Step 74. Twenty-five, no, twenty-seven more steps, and he’d be a shape-shifter — or at least he’d be able to turn himself back into a boy if he had to.

  The next section was called “Knowing Yourself.”

  As far as Nick was concerned, he already knew as much about himself as he needed to. For years, everybody from Uncle Gabe and the principal to his classmates and their parents had been telling him that he was stubborn, untrustworthy, and moody, a compulsive troublemaker, liar, and thief. It was true, too. He didn’t like anybody, he didn’t trust anybody, and he wasn’t scared of anything.

  Animal You wasn’t impressed.

  If you think that’s who you are, you might as well be a frog, because you’ll never be a wizard. Come on, you’ve made it this far. It’ll be worth it. Animals are smart, in an animal way, but they can’t do magic.

  The fact that Nick knew this from firsthand experience just made him madder than he already was. “I’m a kid who wants to be an evil wizard,” he said sullenly. “What else do I need to know?”

  I get it. This is hard. You’re scared. We should just forget it.

  “I’m not scared!” Nick exclaimed.

  Then do the danged exercise and quit bellyaching.

  Step 75: The Journey. You got a pencil?

  Step 75 was a paragraph full of empty spaces. Nick had to fill them in to make a story, not thinking about it too much.

  Walking through a (NOUN), you come to a (PLACE). It is (ADJECTIVE). You go in. You see a (NOUN) and a (NOUN). You (VERB) it. You go out into a (PLACE), where you meet a (NOUN). It (VERB) you. You (VERB) it with (NOUN). You find a (NOUN). You (VERB). You go back to the (PLACE). The (NOUN) is (ADJECTIVE). You leave. There is a (NOUN) in your pocket.

  Nick picked up his pencil, grinning. He’d show that stupid book what he thought of its danged exercises. “Walking through a pile of dog . . .”

  Okay, that rips it.

  “What? I’m just doing what you said.”

  If you can’t follow the Rules, then you aren’t a wizard. And people who aren’t wizards can’t learn magic.

  The page went blank.

  Nick swore. The page was still blank.

  Nick flipped through every page. Not a word in sight, not even a period or a comma. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

  A bubble of rage boiled up in Nick’s belly, rose into his throat, and burst into a roar as he pitched 101 Steps to the Animal You clear across the barn. It landed next to Groucho’s pen.

  Groucho stuck his nose through the slats and lipped at it curiously.

  After a moment, Nick retrieved the book and smoothed its pages with trembling hands. None of them were torn, and the cover was only a little scratched. But inside it was still blank.

  Nick climbed back into the hayloft, slid the offended book into the straw, and brushed Groucho’s coat until he’d calmed himself down. The way he was feeling, the last thing he needed was to run into Smallbone. He’d be eating flies — or worse, scuttling around the kitchen floor with Hell Cat after him — in no time flat, with no way of coming back to himself again until Smallbone decided he was tired of doing his own cooking.

  Or maybe Smallbone wouldn’t turn him back at all.

  The next day, he fished 101 Steps out of the straw, just to check.

  Step 75. Right after breakfast.

  Walking through a FOREST, you come to a SPACESHIP. It is SHINY. You go in. You see a MACHINE and an ALIEN. You PET it. You go out into a DIFFERENT WORLD, where you meet a MONSTER. It TRIES TO EAT you. You KILL it with A BLAST OF FIRE. You find a WELL. You DRINK SOME WATER. You go back to the SPACESHIP. The ALIEN is GONE. You leave. There is a STONE in your pocket.

  Nick studied the completed Step 75. It didn’t say a thing to him, but at least he’d done it.

  Finally we begin to get somewhere! Good.

  Step 76: Facing Your Inner Alien.

  In Maine, February is the longest month of the year despite having the fewest days. For Jerry, this February was longer than most. It wasn’t just the pretty much nonstop snow and wind that kept him stuck in a two-room house without a TV or even a radio to distract him. It was being stuck in that two-room house with his dad. Gabe had a way of making Jerry feel crowded and lonely at the same time that made him want to howl. The
only thing that kept him from going crazy with boredom was the hope of earning his pelt in the spring. In the meantime, he didn’t have much to do but play solitaire and hope the beer held out until the next delivery.

  He was shoveling a path out to the gas pumps to check if they were frozen one afternoon when a coyote appeared at the edge of the woods and turned into a girl wearing a buff-and-gray pelt with the head over her head like a mask. She pushed it back until the muzzle pointed at the sky as if it were howling. “Hey, Jer!” she said. “The Boss wants to see your dad. Better go get him fast. The Boss don’t like waiting.”

  A special invitation from the Boss to the town mechanic turned out to include a snow-free path from the garage to the castle just wide enough to walk on. Still, by the time they got there, Jerry was freezing and wet, and his dad was red nosed and sullen. It didn’t help that about the only thing they could see by the flickering torchlight in the Great Hall was the misty breath of the human Howling Coyotes, bunched together on the red carpet. A group of actual coyotes, with fur, sat and lay around the throne, where the Boss lounged comfortably on his white wolf pelt, his feet propped on the footstool, with Hiram and Audrey stationed behind him, scowling importantly.

  Except for an occasional whine or sniff, the hall was completely still.

  “I have summoned you,” Fidelou said, “to witness my triumph. Smallbone’s Sentries droop and wither like trees in a year of drought. When they fail — and they must fail — Smallbone Cove will be ours. It is only a question of a little push in the right place, at the right time, by the right hands. Those hands cannot be mine.”